Hayjin remained frozen on the ground of clovers and anemones, his head tilted back, his eyes fixed on the girl standing tall before him.
The shadowless golden light that pervaded that immense meadow caressed her silvery hair, making it shimmer like threads of platinum laid out in the sun. Her fair skin was flawless, almost translucent, completely free of the slightest imperfection, and her deep purple eyes vibrant as the heart of a gem gazed at him with a supernatural calmness.
Looking at that face, Hayjin's mind was struck by two violently contradictory emotions: a blind, visceral terror that made the hair on his arms stand on end, and an uncontrollable awe that trapped the breath in his throat.
"How... how does she know my name?"
The silence following that single word spoken by the girl was abyssal. The wind, which until a moment before had whipped through the grassy drifts and set the multicolored petals dancing, died down completely, leaving the meadow immersed in an almost spectral stillness.
Hayjin widened his hazel eyes. His pupils, still constricted and raw from weeping over Isabelle's death, scanned every single detail of her form. That white robe woven of light... that silver hair... that light, floating presence...
The epiphany struck like a lash of ice-cold water across his back.
"You..." Hayjin whispered, his voice reduced to a dry, flat rasp. "You're... the girl from last time."
It was her. It was the exact same creature he had encountered the second time he died after the dungeon mission, ending up in this golden limbo before awakening in Alius once more. The same mysterious figure he had sat beside on the grass, whom he had pelted with dozens of desperate questions without receiving a single word in reply. But now... now she had spoken to him. She had uttered his name.
The memory of what had happened just a few handfuls of minutes earlier in the royal castle resurfaced with the ferocity of a wounded beast. Isabelle's bloodied face, the sickening squelch of the six stabs to her chest, the housekeeper's cold hand held in his, the blade slicing his throat while the shadowy figure caressed him with mock tenderness...
A surge of blind rage, born from panic and sheer desperation, overwhelmed Hayjin's sanity.
"WAS IT YOU?!" Hayjin roared, his voice cracking into a sharp shriek distorted by hatred. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING BEHIND MY BACK?! ARE YOU THE ONE CAUSING THIS HELL?!"
Without thinking, without considering the consequences or the terrifying gap in power between them, Hayjin lunged forward. He dug his boots into the soil, tearing up the grass, and threw a desperate punch fueled by all his frustration, aiming directly for the girl's face.
He never touched her skin.
When the knuckle of his right hand came within less than twenty centimeters of her face, a mysterious, invisible force erupted from the girl's body. It was neither a metallic impact nor an ordinary magic barrier: it was a kinetic shockwave, dense as compressed water and hot as fire, striking Hayjin straight in the chest.
BAM!
"AGHH!"
Hayjin was literally swept away. His body flew backward for over ten meters, tumbling wildly through the air before rolling ruinously down the slope of a green hill. He tumbled through the flowers, slamming his back, elbows, and knees, before coming to rest flat on his back amid an expanse of golden daisies.
The blow knocked the breath right out of him. He lay there for a few seconds, his head spinning and his vision clouded by dark spots.
"Hff... hff... fuck..." Hayjin wheezed, spitting grass stems and dirt from his mouth.
He struggled to a sit, propping his trembling arms against the ground. The girl was still there, standing at the exact spot he had left her, her immaculate robe not even wrinkled. She gazed at the boy with the same serene, almost melancholic expression, devoid of the slightest trace of anger or hostility for the attack she had just suffered.
Hayjin dragged himself forward on his knees, wiping the blood dripping from his split lip with the back of his sleeve. He didn't try to attack her again; the feeling of absolute powerlessness was far too obvious.
"Answer me..." Hayjin begged her, his tone shifting drastically from a scream of rage to a choked, desperate weep. "Please... why am I back here again?! Why was I hurled into this cursed place this time I died, too?!"
The girl didn't move. She remained motionless like a statue of divine marble.
Hayjin clutched his head in his hands, digging his fingers into his black-and-white hair as tears began carving tracks through his dirt-stained face once more.
"What does all of this mean?!" he shouted, his throat burning. "Isabelle is dead! They killed her right before my eyes! I couldn't do anything! I was slaughtered like an animal in my bed! And you... how do I go back?! How do I return to the world of Alius?! Tell me how to do it! I have to go back, I have to stop that killer, I have to save Isabelle! ANSWER ME!"
His desperate cries echoed across the infinite meadow, vanishing into the answerless blue sky.
Hayjin remained there, breathing raggedly, his shoulders wracked by sobs, waiting for an explanation, a word, a single sign of mercy.
But the girl said absolutely nothing.
Instead of speaking, the pristine figure took three elegant steps toward him. She leaned down slightly, extended her right hand downward, and before Hayjin could pull back or comprehend her intentions, she took his hand.
The contact was terrifying. The girl's hand was neither warm nor cold: it was pure energy, a sensation of cosmic presence that instantly stilled the trembling of Hayjin's fingers.
Before the boy could do or say anything, the girl turned and began to run with him across the meadow.
"W-woah! What the...?!"
Hayjin was yanked forward with a force that was irresistible yet incredibly fluid. He was forced to scramble to his feet immediately so as not to be dragged face-down through the dirt.
The two began running side by side across the boundless field of flowers. The girl ran with superhuman grace, her feet barely brushing the tips of the grass stems, her long silver hair floating behind her like a trail of divine light. Hayjin, by contrast, ran with chaotic strides, his face pale with utter shock, completely unable to comprehend what was happening or how he should react to such a surreal situation.
"Hey! Wait! Stop!" Hayjin shouted as they were engulfed by a cloud of colorful petals kicked up by their sprint. "Where are we going?! What are you doing?! Let go of my hand!"
He tried to yank his arm to break free, but the girl's fingers were clamped around his wrist like an enchanted band of steel. It didn't hurt him, but it denied him any possibility of pulling away.
Suddenly, as they crested a particularly tall hill, the girl turned toward him.
A radiant, beautiful, yet terribly unsettling smile given the context bloomed on her pink lips. She began to laugh a crystalline, pure laughter, like the chime of a thousand silver bells echoing in the wind.
Without breaking her stride, the girl pulled Hayjin's arm toward her, spun him around, and began to dance with him.
"W-what?!" Hayjin stammered, his eyes wide in utter panic.
Amidst that immense expanse of green, beneath a motionless sky, the girl began leading a wild waltz, spinning in circles across the meadow, dancing with swift, harmonious, flawless movements. Their feet traced circles in the grass, their clothes billowed in the air, and hundreds of petals from wild roses and daisies were whipped up by their motion, creating a colorful pinwheel around their bodies.
The girl laughed, twirling and pulling Hayjin along in that vortex of unnatural movement.
For Hayjin, however, there was nothing romantic or joyful about this dance. It was a sensory nightmare of catastrophic proportions.
As his body was forced to turn and dance in that golden paradise, his mind was invaded by an assault of devastating flashbacks. He relived the exact moment he had died:
Isabelle's face contorted in terror.
The dull, squelching sound of the first stab piercing his abdomen.
The taste of rust and blood filling his mouth.
The helpless sensation as the assassin severed his throat while he clutched Isabelle's hand as life drained away.
"No... no! Stop!" Hayjin screamed, his head spinning as nausea surged up his throat. "Let go of me! Let me go!"
He tried to break free with every ounce of strength in his body. He dug his heels into the earth to break the rhythm of the dance, tried to push against the girl's chest with his left hand, and yanked his arm with desperate violence.
But he realized he couldn't move at all.
He was paralyzed. His upper body obeyed the girl's commands; his arms, legs, and torso moved in time with the dance as though guided by the invisible strings of a ruthless puppeteer. As if a mysterious, invincible force were holding him fast, trapping him in that grotesque performance.
"Why... why can't I move?!" Hayjin wheezed, terror constricting his throat. "What are you doing to me?!"
The girl didn't answer. She kept smiling, twirling in circles with him, spinning him among the daisies as petals clung to their clothes.
Then, suddenly, a searing heat erupted on the left side of Hayjin's neck.
It wasn't the pain of a cut or physical wound. It was a deep, internal burning, radiating directly from his skin.
The Curse of the Cult the dark curse that had been etched into his neck during his first death in the limbo began to throb harder and harder.
Thump... THUMP... THUMP!
With every throb, the black lines of the brand lit up with a crimson-red light this time instead of the usual purple violent and malevolent. Hayjin felt the veins in his neck swell as a network of black capillaries flared out from the base of the Brand toward his jaw and shoulder, burning as if sulfuric acid were being poured under his skin.
"AAAAAAGH!" Hayjin screamed, bringing his free hand to his neck for an instant, but the girl's grip did not loosen. "THE BRAND! IT BURNS! IT BURNS!"
The throbbing of the Brand kept pace with the frantic rhythm of their dance. The faster the girl spun across the meadow, the more violently the Brand pulsed, releasing surges of dark energy that paralyzed his muscles and made his pores bleed.
Suddenly, the girl halted the rotation of the dance.
The two froze at the center of the meadow, kicking up one final cloud of petals that slowly settled around them.
Before Hayjin could catch his breath or ask a single question, the girl stepped forward, reached out with both arms, and embraced him tightly.
Her pristine body pressed against Hayjin's chest. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders with absolute tenderness, resting her head on his right shoulder. The fragrance she radiated was a celestial harmony of lilies and fresh snow a scent so pure it stood in terrifying contrast to the hellish burning tearing through his neck.
Hayjin stood stiff as a board, his arms locked at his sides by the invisible force enveloping him. His heart hammered wildly while the Brand on his neck kept throbbing like a second, frantic heart.
The girl tilted her head slightly upward, bringing her lips close to Hayjin's left ear.
Her lukewarm breath brushed his earlobe.
Then, in the same sweet, crystalline voice devoid of human inflection with which she had spoken his name, she whispered into his ear:
"Die."
Hayjin's hazel eyes went wide, freezing completely.
The sheer absurdity of that word spoken in that context paralyzed his brain.
"D-die...?" Hayjin repeated in a faint, trembling voice, not understanding the meaning of her statement in the slightest. "What... what are you talking about?! I'm already dead! I was just murdered in my bed! What the fuck are you talking about...?!"
He didn't even have time to finish his sentence.
The girl pulled back slightly from his chest. Her iridescent purple eyes shone with an unnatural light, deep and ancient as the primordial stars.
Reaching out with both hands, she grabbed Hayjin by the head, placing her palms on his temples, locking him in a rigid, absolute grip impossible to break.
Before the boy could scream or try to turn his face away, the girl leaned in and kissed him passionately on the mouth.
Her soft, ice-cold lips sealed over Hayjin's.
"MMMMFF!"
Hayjin tried desperately to break free. He tried to clench his teeth, tried to push his head back, tried to thrash his arms and legs to break that perverse contact, but the magical paralysis enveloping him became absolute. He couldn't move a single muscle in his face or body. He was completely trapped, a prisoner of that forced kiss in the middle of the meadow.
But the kiss brought neither sweetness nor warmth.
The instant their lips met, an incalculable surge of raw, uncontrolled, devastating cosmic energy poured from the girl's mouth straight into Hayjin's oral cavity.
It was like swallowing an exploding star.
The heat was immediate, blinding, terrifying. Hayjin felt his teeth shatter, his tongue burning and melting in the span of a fraction of a second as the energy surged through his palate straight into his brain. The Brand on his neck blazed with a blinding white light, reaching a critical overload.
The pressure inside his skull exploded exponentially within a single microsecond. He felt his cranial bones crack, the blood vessels in his eyes burst, and his vision snuffed out in a flash of gold and blood.
The kiss ended. The girl slowly parted her lips from his and stepped back.
A second later...
BOOM!
Hayjin's head exploded completely.
A devastating shockwave of blood, bone fragments, flesh, and brain matter flew everywhere as cosmic light radiated across the meadow, obliterating his upper body in a ruthless, instantaneous explosion. Hayjin's headless body remained standing for a single heartbeat among the flowers before collapsing heavily onto the green carpet.
The girl wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her white hand, observing the headless corpse that was already beginning to dissolve into a trail of golden and shadow particles.
Then, the stillness of the meadow broke. The wind began to blow again, and Hayjin's consciousness was swallowed once more by the cold, endless abyss.
Darkness was not an absolute void this time. It was not the eternal silence of death, nor the unnatural warmth of the golden meadow. It was a violent wrench, a jolt that shook his bones as if he had been thrown into a tub of ice-cold water in the dead of winter.
The pain, the agony of the explosion, the memory of the fatal kiss, and the sensation of the Brand burning his skin vanished in the blink of an eye, replaced by a sensory chaos that overwhelmed him with unprecedented ferocity.
Noises. Voices. The clatter of wagon wheels on stone cobblestones. The acrid smell of roasted meat, exotic spices, and human sweat. The blinding glare of the mid-morning sun reflecting off pupils still dilated with horror.
Hayjin found himself standing, staggering. His hands, which a second earlier had been torn away in the explosion, were now frantically clutching the edges of a wicker basket. His heart hammered in his chest with such violence that it stole his breath.
"...too high a price, merchant! You don't intend to sell us this moldy goods at noble prices, do you?"
The voice of an unfamiliar woman, the hum of the crowd, the crying of a child in the distance. Hayjin threw his eyes wide. He wasn't in the meadow. He wasn't in his room.
He was at the capital's market. Again.
He looked around like a madman, his hands rushing to his neck, then his chest, then his head. He felt intact skin. He felt the weight of his hair, the warmth of the sun on his scalp. No slit throat. No hole in his chest. No wound.
"Did I... did I turn back time?" The thought bounced through his brain, leaving him stunned. "Again? One more time? It's impossible..."
Panic a mix of nausea and pure post-traumatic shock made him stagger. The world around him spun dizzyingly, the faces of merchants and passersby blurring into indistinct smears of color. His mind was still trapped in Isabelle's blood, the icy embrace of the mysterious girl, and the sensation of his head disintegrating. He could still hear the echo of that "Die" thundering inside his skull like a death knell.
He whipped around, searching for a focal point, a reality to anchor him to that cursed day before.
And there she was.
Just a few paces ahead, intent on examining a stall of fine fabrics with the critical eye of someone ensuring quality meets royal standards, stood she.
Isabelle.
Her plum-purple dress was intact, unstained by the pool of dark blood he had seen spreading across his room's floor. Her hair was bound in her usual strict hairstyle no sign of violence, no death rattle. She was alive. She was fine.
Hayjin felt his knees buckle. A choked groan escaped his lips, a sound of pure torment fortunately drowned out by the market's din. His hazel eyes, overflowing with a desperation he could never put into words, remained glued to the back of the girl's neck.
He wanted to scream, wanted to rush to her, wanted to shake her and ask how it was possible she was alive, but he was paralyzed. The weight of what he had witnessed the way she died, the six stabs, the warmth of her hand fading in his was a boulder crushing his lungs.
Isabelle, perhaps sensing the weight of that gaze laden with an anguish beyond all logic, stopped touching the silk. She stood motionless for an instant, her shoulders tense. Then, slowly, she turned on her heels.
There was none of the smugness or annoyance she usually reserved for him when catching him slacking. Her dark eyes met Hayjin's, and in that instant, the boy saw something that chilled the blood in his veins.
It was not the look of someone living out a normal day. It was the look of someone who had stared into the abyss. Isabelle's irises trembled, her face blanched to a deathly pale hue, and her parted lips whispered a single name, heavy with all the terror of a shared nightmare.
"...Hayjin?"